'Do you have a joint bank account?' poll discussion

Hubby and I have our personal accounts that our wages etc come in to, then we each pay a set amount in to a joint account, which all bills/direct debits are set to come from.

I'm married and we both have separate accounts and pay into a joint account each week/month (he gets paid weekly).

I also have other accounts that are in my name only and I have internet access to all the accounts, even his. I take care of all the money, transfers, bills, etc. I know what's happening with our money at all times. Call me a control freak but he's not bothered about money, or savings, etc, so he leaves it all to me.

bettybrown wrote: »

My husband and I have always had a joint current account and savings account. We have separate ISA's just because we have to! I can't understand being married to someone and not having a joint account ... everything is shared anyway. Some people say that they put in equal amounts for household expenditure then keep the rest individually- so that would mean very often one person in the marriage is richer than the other!! Doesn't sound very equal to me...
I am the breadwinner by the way!

I wholeheartedly agree with this. We got married last June and have a joint current account, and no other current accounts. We have various savings accounts, one in joint names and the rest in sole names (e.g. ISAs) because they are products that you can only have in sole names.

I discovered last year the value of joint accounts. Three weeks before we got married, hubby was hospitalised out of the blue with an awful infection. He was really ill and I was terrified something would happen to him. At that point we had separate accounts and he had more money than I did as I'd been clearing my accounts out paying wedding bills. I had an awful panic that if the worst happened I'd have access to very little money and many more wedding bills were soon due!

Our joint savings account pays a puny interest rate, but we keep an emergency fund in there in case something happens and one of us has a delay in gaining access to the other's savings accounts. We also keep a slush fund in the joint current account.

BUT, having gone to joint accounts, I have a big problem with Paypal now which has really annoyed me.

Paypal insist that you have a valid bank account linked with your Paypal account. I tried to change my bank account on my Paypal account to the joint account, but my husband had already linked it to his Paypal account. Paypal have a rule that a bank account can only be linked to one Paypal account, not two. Because I have no other bank account that I can link to Paypal, I can't verify my Paypal account. I will shortly reach the limit for how much you can spend through Paypal without being verified and will therefore have to stop using my Paypal account.

The only possible solution is for hubby to tell me his Paypal password so I can use his account. Technically that would mean him breaching Paypal rules by giving out his login details.

If you google 'paypal joint account' you find lots of people who have joint accounts with the same frustration that they and their partners can no longer have two Paypal accounts. It's a ludicrous situation.

We have a joint account that our wages go into and our expenditure goes out of but as part of our budget we have spending money paid into our own accounts. It means we don't have any of those 'what did you spend that on ...' conversations and my husband thinks its better when we get gifts or something we don't have to hide it.
It works really well for us.